


Fumbling Towards Understanding

by ncfan



Series: Fire Emblem Echoes Main Timeline Fic [1]
Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Act 1, Developing Relationship, Gen, Introspection, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-20 01:17:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18982225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Kliff approaches Silque for help in learning magic.





	Fumbling Towards Understanding

Kliff had packed lightly. He’d had little choice but to pack lightly. The amount of time his mother spent visiting her patients tended towards the highly variable, and she could have returned at any minute. The outcome of the argument would not have been enough to convince him to stay, but the others might well have left while he and she were still shouting at each other. Packing lightly and quickly was imperative.

He had packed quickly and lightly, but Kliff had been planning this for a while; he knew what to pack, and leaving with the intent of joining a resistance movement only altered his plans slightly. He had managed to walk out of the village without forgetting anything important. And, mercifully, no one asked him if he had remembered to say goodbye to his mother.

One of the things he had packed was his spellbook. Part of him was afraid that if he left it in the village and attempted to come back for it later, he’d find it burned or otherwise destroyed. The other part was hopeful for…

But it wasn’t realistic to hope for that, so that spellbook spent the first couple of weeks of the journey sitting at the bottom of Kliff’s pack, dead weight that made his skin prickle with agitation every time he caught sight of a bit of the binding peeking out from under the change of clothes he had packed, or when one of the corners pressed up against the side of the pack and made its impression impossible to ignore. Just something to agitate and irritate and stamp his own inadequacy into his mind.

At least he was proving better with a sword than he had thought he would. Sparring was one thing, but Kliff had always expected that if he was ever caught out in actual combat, he’d be lucky to be skewered in the space of a minute, rather than thirty seconds. Instead, he had managed to come out of every engagement so far without sustaining serious injury. Now, if only he could stop his hands from shaking once the battle was over and the high, thrumming energy that carried him through battle fled him all at once.

The spellbook had sat, untouched, at the bottom of his pack for nearly two weeks, but now, Kliff found himself taking it out in the evenings. Not to read. He had read the book cover to cover many times, and though he did not tire of rereading books if they truly captured his interest, he couldn’t make himself concentrate on the words contained therein. After the first failure, he stopped trying.

It was funny, the way, when people formed groups of more than about five people, they tended to break off into smaller groups come the evening, when the campfire was lit and the sky darkened enough to reveal the net of distant stars. They were currently a party of eight—the soldiers they had freed from the Southern Outpost had liked their chances better with that stuck-up nobleman who had intercepted them soon after leaving there. Tobin and Gray had formed one group; Alm, Lukas, and Clair, another. Faye was trying to join in on the latter group, but couldn’t seem to find an opening. Silque occupied the uneasy position of being in none of the groups, and yet being somewhat in both.

Kliff was in neither of them. Kliff had managed to become part of the background, to his mingled relief and irritation. (He didn’t know why it was irritation that paced about inside of him. He could barely last a full minute of conversation initiated by another person before he began to grow frustrated, before the gaze of the other was like a hook driving under his skin, before it took every ounce of his restraint not to snap at them—and sometimes, he found his restraint unequal to the task; just ask Tobin. This… It wasn’t right. Kliff couldn’t figure out what to do.) He was very much left to his own devices, left to stew over an unopened spellbook and to stew over the path he was trying to lay down before him.

He wanted to walk down it. He wanted to stay right where he was, stay silent, stay a part of the background that no one would speak to or bother. Funny how the people he’d die for were the same people he just wanted to leave him alone. But if he was to be more able in the matter of protecting his own life, more able in the matter of protecting the others, he needed—

It was at just that moment that Silque lied down on the makeshift pallet that had been made for her from a few spare cloaks in the Southern Outpost. Kliff shook his head, let a sharp, hot sigh whistle out of his mouth. Tomorrow. He’d approach her tomorrow.

-0-0-0-

Kliff rarely felt at ease around other people, to the surprise of absolutely no one who knew him. It was not something he had much facility in hiding, for all that he had not always felt this way. Even Clair, for however little time she had been traveling with them, seemed to have sensed his unease, for though she might not pointedly ignore him the way she did Gray after one of his heavy-handed attempts to “woo” her (which never failed to insult, which never failed to ignore the fact that Clair was obviously looking elsewhere to do some wooing of her own), rarely approached him.

Silque was a bit different. Well, Silque and Alm were different. Alm was restful to be around. Kliff had never truly understood why (he thought he knew, once upon a time, but recent revelations threw that theory into complete disarray), but it took longer for him to grow agitated around Alm than it did with most people. And with Silque, the effect was intensified. Maybe it was because she didn’t impose. Maybe it was because she was a cleric. Maybe it was something else altogether.

At present, Silque had been traveling with their party for a little over a week, and Kliff thought they had exchanged maybe twenty words in that time. Maybe it wasn’t that much to go on, but when he was around her, he really didn’t feel agitated, or ready to snap, or anything. Maybe this wouldn’t be a disaster.

And there would certainly be enough time for him to try. Traveling on foot, slowly to avoid attracting the attention of Desaix’s men or the brigands infesting the countryside, it would be another eight days before they reached the Deliverance’s primary base. Plenty of time to find it in himself to speak.

Though maybe it would be better to leave the spellbook in his pack.

It was nearly noon by the time Kliff found it in himself to slip to the back of the line where Silque walked. Lukas warned them to be wary of ambush at all times, but Kliff was uncertain as to how they’d ever hear approaching foes over the crunch of dry leaves beneath their feet, over the hot, dry wind that buffeted them all back and forth. For that matter, if anything was going to draw the attention of brigands or of Desaix’s men, it was going to be the constant snorts and nickers of Clair’s Pegasus, who grew more visibly agitated at being grounded by the hour.

The skirt of Silque’s habit was grass-stained and torn, and yet she managed to walk down the dusty path (a holloway rather than a proper road; Lukas was hoping they would be better able to avoid detection this way) with a flawless show of dignity. Back straight, face tranquil, headdress neat; Kliff wondered if part of the training to become a cleric of the church of Mia involved learning how to appear completely unruffled in any situation. If not for the state of her skirt, Kliff could easily have believed that she was simply walking back to her priory after going to a nearby town on an errands. He wished he could effect that kind of calm.

“Silque?”

At least Kliff could keep his voice steady as he approached. At least he could appear calm, and keep his sharp tongue blunted.

It took Silque a moment to focus her eyes on him. They walked only a few feet away from each other, and this close, Kliff could see that her gray eyes were flecked with yellow. “Good morning, Kliff. What is it?”

That there would be no obligation for small talk was a blessed relief. “You… you know how to perform magic, don’t you?” His mother had been taught magic, though the only magic she ever displayed any knowledge of, let alone facility in, was healing magic. But then, perhaps things were different in Rigel, for better or worse. If warlike Rigel did not teach its clerics combat magic, certainly Zofia wouldn’t…

No. Don’t lose all hope before she could even respond.

Silque nodded. “As part of my training as a cleric, I was taught healing magic. I was also taught the spell Nosferatu, but pledged only to use it in defense of my own life.” Her lips curved into the crooked shape of a wry smile. “A situation I often find myself in, these days.”

Kliff grimaced. “Yeah, I’ve noticed that.”

“Why do you wish to know if I can perform magic?” Silque’s tone was gentle, but her eyes were watchful, her face a careful mask.

Whatever had occurred in the past to provoke such a reaction, Kliff could only hope he did nothing to replicate the experience. “I have been…” He thought of his limitations, his failures, and bitterness silenced him a long moment before he was able to continue. “I’ve been trying to learn magic. For years now. I have a spellbook, and I’ve been able to perform some basic spells, but not consistently. Not well.”

“How did your tutor go about teaching you?”

“I didn’t _have_ a tutor. Sir Mycen would look at the spellbook, mark out the spells he was willing to let me try and figure out on my own, and that was it.”

Silque’s eyebrows rose, ever so slightly, though they passed under shifting leaf-shadow, and it could merely have been a trick of the light. “That would explain a lack of progress.” Her eyes flicked back to his face. “And you wish for my help?”

“Yes.” No use trying to be indirect about it. Anyone could have told he was being false, if he tried at something he was so inexpert in.

Silque was silent as she considered her response. Kliff wished he could attempt the slightest guess at what was going through her mind, but her face was just as placid as it ever was, outside of combat. Finally, she said, “I trained for a while as a mage, before settling upon becoming a cleric, instead. Though I did not learn too many combat spells in that time, I did learn a few. I believe I remember how to perform them. But I have a request, in turn.”

“What is it?”

She smiled slightly, her eyes crinkling upwards. “I wouldn’t say no to being aided when we stop to forage for food.”

Kliff nodded firmly. “Done.”

The idea of this as a transactional exchange made it easier for Kliff to deal with. It was simpler, this way.

-0-0-0-

Though Kliff’s mother only left the house on business, and he had no father present to teach him, it was hardly as if he had never been taught how to forage. Kliff remembered it taking a lot of persuasion for his mother to agree, but eventually, Tobin’s father had prevailed upon her to let him take Kliff out into the forest with him and some of his younger children, so that her son would at least know how to find food out in the wild.

That had been years ago, and Kliff had been routinely distracted by the younger children out there with him, _and_ he hadn’t been allowed out of the village ever since the increase in bandit activity had started, but he had retained the lessons. He still remembered how to distinguish edible mushrooms from poisonous ones, still remembered which berries were safe to eat. Never had Kliff been any good at trapping animals, but he did, at least, know how to climb trees in search of nuts or fruit of birds’ nests full of eggs.

There were a lot of wild onions growing in this stretch of forest, in particular. Or maybe it was wild garlic; to Kliff’s eyes, the two plants looked much the same, and the tiny bulbs smelled virtually identical. Either way, there was a lot of them, enough so that even as small as they were, they’d provide a fair amount of food for the party at the next meal.

Lukas watched on with some apprehension, holding the reins of Clair’s pegasus as the other seven got on with it. He had been _decidedly_ uneager to let them climb out of the holloway to forage, but the need to prolong their supply of preserved food outweighed his caution, and he settled instead for standing guard.

“It’s quite nice,” Silque remarked from her place a few feet from Kliff, gathering the ambiguously wild onions or wild garlic into a medium-sized pouch, “to be able to find aid when foraging. When I traveled by myself, I often had rather less to eat than was truly comfortable.” She brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “I find the taste of mana herbs quite rejuvenating, and they have many medicinal applications, but they are not terribly filling.”

Kliff had never known true hunger until the famine began, and even then, it wasn’t as if he had gone so much as a single day without food of some kind. Food to eat could still be found; it was just significantly more of a trouble to obtain. But now, they were marching towards the bloody heart of a civil war, and perhaps to war with Rigel, as well. Kliff had read enough history books to know how kingdoms and empires behaved when at war. Scorched and salted fields, wells stuffed high with corpses, they could expect all of that before too much longer, and with less time to forage on top of it…

Well, it wasn’t going to be pleasant, that much was certain. The others would discover this in their own time, and somehow, Kliff didn’t think they would listen if he told them. He did not think his words would reach them.

“And it’s a good thing there are still plenty of plants around for us to eat.” Which surprised Kliff somewhat, given the famine that gripped Zofia in its parched fingers. He looked down at his own bag, where dandelion shoots mingled with what could have been wild onions or wild garlic, and frowned. “I’ve never had any luck trapping animals.”

Silque’s hands froze over the onion—he was certain it was onion, now—greens, fingers threatening to curl into fists. “Yes,” and her voice was just a touch faint, “I am grateful for an abundance of plant food.”

Kliff managed a few moments without his concern at the change in her demeanor getting the better of him. They barely knew each other, really, and Kliff hated it enough when people asked after him that unless it was truly urgent, it was rare that he could stand asking after other people. If it was something that was going to provoke the same agitated, too-close feeling in them that it did in him, he truly did not wish to inflict it on them.

But he was at least _aware_ of social conventions, and what people thought of those who didn’t follow them on a regular basis. “…Are you alright?”

Silque wasn’t like him. If having this sort of scrutiny directed towards her left her agitated, left her feeling as if there wasn’t enough space to breathe, she concealed it well. The ghost of a smile threaded her lips as she assured him, “I am quite well. Though I am bound by no vow not to consume the flesh of beasts, I was always taught that the Mother holds all life to be sacred.” Her gaze shifted slightly, her eyes seeming to look straight through Kliff, to something beyond human sight. “For as long as I have been in the care of my home priory, that is what I was taught. In extremity, I would not consider it beyond me, but to eat the flesh of a living thing is something I do not relish.”

Kliff had never been much for piety. It was one of the few things where he and his mother were in accordance with one another. She had, once upon a time, served as a cleric, but it had not been Mila she worshipped, and Kliff had never gotten the impression that she had really taken to her adopted homeland’s god. Due reverence shown to the gods had never been anything written into the fabric of their household.

Better not to tell Silque that. She was, after all, a cleric, and he suspected that, at best, she could greet the news with discomfort. He kept his silence.

(Kliff was reminded, irresistibly, of the time he was taught how to kill, skin, and joint a rabbit. He remembered the way the rabbit had convulsed as the life had gone out of it, remembered all the dreams he had had for nights afterwards where he had convulsed like that, where he had seen images of himself without skin, images of himself cut up into the pieces he had been instructed to cut the rabbit into. With some chagrin, he remembered how he had cried and kicked up a fuss the next time he was supposed to go to what was, essentially, a butchery lesson, until finally his teacher had thrown his hands up in exasperation and returned Kliff to his mother.

He didn’t have dreams like that about the people he had killed since leaving Ram Village. His dreams of them were something else entirely.)

And their attention was soon drawn away from their own thoughts and activities to the, erm… Shenanigans might have been too strong a word for it, though if the consequences of those activities were taken to their logical conclusion, shenanigans would be the _perfect_ word for it.

Alm and Clair had opted to forage together, and the ongoing conversation, which drifted now to Kliff’s ears, served as proof as to why they both should have been made to forage with someone else instead. _Stark_ proof.

“—was a child, I loved playing in mud puddles after the rain.”

Clair’s voice was, Kliff would admit, pleasant to listen to. He didn’t know if being taught how to speak was something done with noblewomen, but if it was, whoever had tutored her had experienced a rousing success. Her speaking voice was obviously affected—Kliff had never, ever heard someone speak with an inflection even remotely similar to hers—and to Kliff, it almost sounded like the way someone’s voice would if they were somehow singing and speaking at the same time.

“I gave my poor nurse such worries; she was convinced I would take ill after just a few minutes mucking about in the puddles.”

Alm rolled his eyes and laughed. “I bet whoever had to wash your clothes went to bed with a bottle of ale under their pillows.”

“Oh, no doubt! I must say, I have little experience with the business of gathering food for my own supper.” Clair smiled widely at Alm as she scoured the forest floor. “It’s positively rustic.”

She had a speaking voice that was, without a doubt, very pleasant to listen to. What words that voice formed, however, made Kliff feel as if his mouth was coated with gall.

“Yeah, well…” There was still laughter lurking in Alm’s voice, and that kept Kliff’s attention on him, somewhat unwillingly. “I’m just glad we’re introducing it to you like this. I can think of some ways we could have started you off on with ‘village life’ that would have sent you running for the hills.”

“Alm! I am not so fragile as all that!” But she was laughing.

“If I told you you had to go slop a pigpen, you’d probably just laugh in my face,” Alm retorted. “Come on, Clair, you _would_.”

From her place kneeling next to Kliff, Silque chuckled softly. “They are not lacking in enthusiasm.”

“Alm’s never been out of the village for more than an hour,” Kliff told her sourly. “The last time was seven years ago, and knights were trying to kill us, so I really don’t think he was paying much attention to the nearby plants. He has no idea what he’s doing right now, trust me. And I’m _sure_ Clair doesn’t know what to look for.”

“I’m sure they’ll find something edible,” Silque said consolingly.

“Yeah, and we’ll have to look at every last thing in their sacks to make sure they haven’t picked up anything poisonous or rotting or covered in bugs.”

At that, Silque did something Kliff hadn’t seen her do before. She looked him up and down slowly, and then, just as slowly, as if making certain that he registered the action, she raised an eyebrow. “And I suppose that you always foraged just what was requested of you, and that none of it ever was anything that could have made those who ate it ill.”

If it was a rebuke, it was one worded and intoned more gently than what Kliff was accustomed to. But it still manage to cut deeper than most of the rebukes he had received lately—certainly, his mother’s barely registered anymore, excepting the occasions when they managed only to irritate, rather than truly sting—and Kliff turned his attention back to his work, abashed.

-0-0-0-

Lukas being the most experienced soldier in the group, it had been Lukas who had decided upon the structure of the night watches the group engaged in. Two people would be engaged in watch in the course of a single night, one taking the first half, the other the other half, and the group would cycle through the roster over the course of four nights, until each of them had taken a watch shift, at which point the whole thing would start all over again.

There had been complaints. Clair claimed that a lady needed her beauty sleep, and Gray claimed that Faye, who shared a night with him, was waking him up too early and making him take more time awake than he was supposed to be, though Faye strenuously denied this. Tobin had woken them all up twice on a false alarm, and Kliff himself, though he would never admit it, had quickly learned to hate being alone in the dark, everyone around him asleep and unresponsive. There was no silence—silence would have been easier. Instead, the ambient noise of the forest, owls and other nocturnal birds, the wind moaning lowly through the trees, their leaves rustling, the scream of a distant lynx, rose up from the darkness, louder and louder until all of it pressed down on Kliff’s shoulders and pricked at his skin and he was thoroughly, unpleasantly awake, alone in the dark.

Lukas had answered every last one of those complaints with a mild smile, a conciliatory tone, and the complainer walking away from the conversation feeling incredibly mortified about _every_ complaint that had ever come out of their mouths in their entire lives. Truly, this must be the trick to leading any kind of group; Kliff could only wish that it was a trait that he himself possessed.

Kliff was not scheduled to be on watch tonight. _His_ watch had been last night, and no matter how much Gray offered to switch with him, he was not going to budge. Just as well that he was not on watch tonight, for given the way the evening was going, he was going to be too exhausted to do anything but sleep by the time it was time for him to bed down.

“There’s no doubt you have the inborn talent required for magic.” At least they had established that much. If Kliff had gotten this far only to discover that the reason he had never made much progress with magic was because he _could not_ make any progress with magic, that would likely have been the cue for him to hurl the spellbook straight into the fire. “But you lack focus. This is why your efforts thus far have met with such mixed results.”

Eight times. That was how many times Silque had requested that Kliff try out the simplest fire spell in the book before she had seen enough of his work to draw conclusions. Eight times, and he was already feeling as if every last fiber of his bones had been replaced with lead. Performing magic sapped the energy of its user. He knew that. It was well-documented that performing magic was exhausting. Normally—and this was making him second-guess himself, if only on a minor level—it was only supposed to be more powerful or intricate spells that had such an effect. But it seemed that performing simpler spells many times in succession could have the same effect, after long enough.

Kliff felt like he was five seconds away from falling out. Maybe that was why he didn’t snap at Silque in response, and said only, curtly, “I put as much focus into it as I can.”

Silque was sitting on a tree root that protruded high above the ground, and it could well have been the most comfortable chair in the world, given that she had not shifted or squirmed on her seat even once, in all the time they had been out there. It wasn’t _that_ dark out there, not yet; the sky had only turned red, as opposed to dark, and Kliff would have noticed if she was even remotely visibly uncomfortable.

That was frustrating.

And the calm, deliberate tone of her voice made him feel embarrassed for even feeling frustrated as she explained to him, “There is a different sort of focus that goes into the performance of magic than for physical tasks. You must be as focused upon yourself, on the channels of power that flow within you, as you are upon your environment and the effect the spell you perform will have. You must be aware of yourself.”

Kliff shifted his weight from left foot to right, looked away from where she sat. “Know myself, huh?”

“Is this something difficult for you?” Silque’s voice was very quiet, and very intent.

This saw him looking back at her sharply. “And you’ve never had something about yourself that you don’t want to confront?”

He expected more imperturbable calm from Silque. If she was going to direct a rebuke his way, he expected a redux of that afternoon, when she had silenced him from his accusations of Alm and Clair.

What was expected was not what was received.

The light that spilled over the forest was a deep red, and rusty shadows were starting to draw deep and dark over the holloway. The fire that had been lit some distance away offset those shadows in stark color, and perhaps it exaggerated Kliff’s observation of Silque’s reaction, but surely it couldn’t have been by that much.

She just… sort of sagged against the earthen wall of the holloway, like a doll left to slump against a wall at an awkward angle. Kliff wasn’t entirely certain Silque even knew she was doing it, for when she looked at him, her face was nearly as composed as it had been when he had first laid eyes on her in the shrine near Ram Village, and her voice was almost steady. “Yes,” she said softly, “and perhaps, one day, I will tell you. If I deem it appropriate. When I first learned magic, I, too, was forced to confront myself. And I promise you, as daunting as it is, it is not as terrible as you might think. Now, focus upon yourself.”

She smiled, a thin, almost wistful smile, and when she did this, she looked suddenly very familiar. Kliff couldn’t shake the feeling, but neither could he place it.

Disconcertment setting his heart to a juddering pulse, Kliff returned to the lesson. She was right. He needed to focus.

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah. In a novelization, I think of Echoes, rather than Gaiden, Kliff and Silque are secret half-siblings. I am taking that and running with it.


End file.
